Troubled Vets ‘ICEd,’ Booted From US

May 26, 2010

Military.com|by Bryant Jordan

A former Marine and Gulf War veteran may soon be boarding a flight to Jamaica — the ticket cost picked up by the U.S. government.

But Rohan Coombs, who came to the U.S. from Jamaica as a child, is not looking forward to the return trip. He’s being deported.

Coombs is not alone. By some estimates, 3,000 to 4,000 veterans are awaiting deportation, and the deportations have been going on since a 1996 law made it easier for the U.S. to boot out foreign nationals, including legal permanent residents – “green-card” holders – who served in the military if they commit crimes. Collectively, they’ve been dubbed “Banished Veterans” by those who say that vets – even those who have committed crimes – deserve better than to be booted from the country they served.

Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, called the 1996 legislation “a terrible law that has very un-American consequences.” He said the law is particularly unfair when it comes to veterans who arrived in the U.S. as children, who grow up not knowing any language but English and knowing only the U.S. as home.

“It seems to me they should not have the threat of deportation,” Filner said. “I would say give them citizenship based on the fact they served in our armed forces. It seems a commons sense thing to me.”
 
“I come at it from a legal, moral and ethical background,” retired Army Maj. Gen. Alfred Valenzuela, former deputy commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, told Military.com. “If you commit a crime, you pay your dues. Having said that … if you’ve served your country, I think you are due a certain right, if you will, [to be allowed to stay in the United States].”Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency responsible for deporting illegals, does not see it that way.”ICE respects the service all provide to our country. However, anyone not here legally or those who have [legal permanent residence] status and commit a criminal act can be subject to removal proceedings from the U.S.,” Brandon Alvarez-Montgomery, a spokesman for the agency, told Military.com in an e-mail. “ICE understands the hardship some may face, and we prioritize our cases on criminal acts. Each case is individual. As a law enforcement agency, ICE enforces the laws as they are written, not [arbitrarily].”Craig Shagin, a Pennsylvania attorney who is representing Coombs, agrees that wearing a military uniform “doesn’t give [vets] the right to violate anything. They should be punished the same as you or me.”Coombs, who arrived in the U.S. at age 9, slipped into some bad ways after he was discharged from the Marine Corps in 1994, says his fiancée, Robyn Sword of Stanton, Calif. In March 2008, she said, Coombs was arrested for selling marijuana. Shagin said the charge is considered trafficking, one of the offenses ICE may use to begin deportation proceedings.

<!– –>

“But it’s about loyalty. That’s what’s so infuriating to me,” he told Military.com. “If we support troops because they’re loyal to us, we should be loyal to them. It’s a question of standing by people who are standing by us, even when they’re down, when they’re not perfect, even when they are bad human beings.”In many of the cases, veterans say they believed their service made them U.S. citizens, or the fact they arrived in the U.S. as children.Since January, the rules on servicemembers becoming U.S. citizens have been amended to expedite the process, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Military members now serving, or who have served since Sept. 11, 2001, may apply immediately for citizenship. The rule extends to those who served in the selected and ready reserve, in addition to active-duty members.For immigrants who served during peacetime, the revision rolled back the time requirement for naturalization from three years to one year, according to DHS.Army Reserve Lt. Col. Margaret Stock, who testified before Congress on the issue in 2008, said the Army is taking steps to help its newest immigrant members become citizens. Under the Army program, immigrant troops will have their citizenship by the time they leave basic training, said Stock, who works on immigration policy issues for the Army.The Navy is moving in the same direction, according to Stock, and these programs will prevent future immigrant veterans from being vulnerable to deportation.But for those who served yet never gained citizenship, nothing has changed.The Banished Veterans site includes stories of veterans dating back to the Vietnam War era who have been deported already or are facing deportation because of certain crimes, many of them related to drug use after they left the military.One is former Army Spc. Rudi Robinson. Born Udo Ackermann to a German prostitute and an African-American soldier in 1955, he was adopted by the Robinsons, another African-American GI and his wife, at age 3. Robinson didn’t learn that he was adopted until he was 17, just before going into the Army. He had legal problems in the Army that resulted in a court-martial, he said, but then straightened out and finished off his time with an honorable discharge.But later troubles with drugs and petty theft resulted in jail terms and, after serving time in 2003, he was deemed deportable under the 1996 law and sent to Germany. He didn’t speak the language and by then he had lived in the United States for more than 40 years. Today, Robinson operates a shelter Streetlytes, a charity he founded in 2007 that provides food, clothing and emotional support to London’s homeless.His success aside, Robinson believes it was just wrong to deport him from the only country he ever knew, depriving him of years with his children and grandchildren. His father died and he was not able to come back for the funeral. He faces the same prospect when his mother, now 89, dies.”I don’t want to come out like a victim. I’m a survivor,” he said. “I turned my life around. I just want the opportunity to go back and see my kids. I would like to have my U.S. citizenship. I believe I deserved it a long time ago. I believe I should have had it when I was adopted by American parents.”Retired general Valenzuela, himself the son of Mexican immigrants to the U.S., believes the U.S. needs to re-examine the deportation cases it has made against veterans. “They should be considered to be brought back to the United States for all the rights that they have earned.””I would say we owe it to them, we owe it to the country … to sit down on a case-by-case basis and see how we can accommodate and help them, rather than just banish them and deport them.”

Read Full Post »

Born To Be Barred

At the border, U.S. citizens are being refused re-entry because they were delivered by midwives.

It was just another sweltering Monday morning in August. Yuliana Trinidad Castro sat in her truck with her mother, sister, and newborn daughter, windows up and air conditioner on high, waiting to cross into Brownsville from the Mexican border city of Matamoros. That weekend, like so many before, they had visited family on the southern side of the border. The trip back home, a sluggish procession across the international bridge through curving aisles of bumper-to-bumper traffic, was frustrating but familiar. The Castro sisters did it practically every week. “It was just so routine,” Yuliana’s sister, Laura Nancy Castro, recalled months later.

Then they reached the checkpoint. As always, the sisters, both American citizens, rolled down their windows and handed their entry documents to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer on duty, Eliseo Cabrera. Laura Nancy handed over her U.S. passport. Yuliana presented her daughter’s Texas birth certificate and her own, along with a receipt proving she had applied for a U.S. passport. Their mother, a Mexican national, presented her visitor’s visa.

The officer, Laura Nancy says, scarcely glanced at the documents—except for Yuliana’s. He examined her birth certificate and application receipt for a few moments, then ran the information on his computer. He was especially interested, the women would soon learn, in the person who registered Yuliana’s birth certificate—a once-popular midwife named Trinidad Saldivar.

Midwifery was once a cultural institution and an economic necessity for many along the border. Since the 1960s, the practice has almost disappeared as regulations for midwives, or parteras, have become more stringent—and as they were increasingly accused of falsely registering children of Mexican families as U.S. citizens. Until the early 1990s, Saldivar was one of the most sought-out parteras along both sides of the Texas-Mexico border. Following an investigation by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (as it was then called), Saldivar was one of more than a dozen Valley midwives accused of falsifying birth certificates. Some pleaded guilty—to avoid, they said, serving prison time. No one was asked which records they had been paid to forge and which were authentic, making it nearly impossible to determine which children had been delivered in the United States and which had not. Saldivar was never convicted, but her name was tarnished in the process—at least in the eyes of the U.S. government, which included her in a list of more than 230 “suspicious” midwives.

Maybe her name registered that morning with Officer Cabrera. But he appeared to be convinced from the start that the document was false, Yuliana has since stated in legal filings. He asked questions but ignored the answers, she says. He confiscated all four passengers’ documents, directed them out of traffic, and referred them for further inspection. What happened then, Yuliana’s mother says, “I would not wish on anyone.”

The three womens’ court statements tell the same story. They were taken into separate rooms and held for 11 hours. They were interrogated, mocked, harassed, and threatened with deportation or imprisonment—all, they say, to persuade them to sign confessions saying they held fraudulent documents. They were offered neither food nor water. Their requests to call for help or speak to relatives who’d come to the international bridge to look for them were denied. A cousin who wanted to see them was spirited away by officers, the sisters say.

“It was as if we had been kidnapped,” says the mother, Trinidad Muraira de Castro.

“I was so scared,” says Laura Nancy. “No one knew what was happening to us.”

Yuliana remembers hearing her baby, Camila, cry uncontrollably outside in the lobby while an officer interrogated her. She insisted she was born in Brownsville, as the certificate said. Her citizenship had never before been questioned, she told the officer, and if permitted, she could retrieve more documentation, including her mother’s blood work from a Brownsville hospital after Yuliana’s birth. In that icy little room, none of that mattered. “The officer continued harassing me, yelling at me, and telling me that I was Mexican and that he was going to deport me,” Yuliana, then 25, wrote in her statement. “After a while, I realized I had no way out since he told me no matter what I did, to him I was Mexican.”

It was all too much for her mother. Trinidad says she was grilled at length about falsified birth certificates she had indeed obtained for Laura Nancy and Yuliana when they were children—certificates saying they were Mexican citizens so they could attend school in Matamoros. Out of fear and exhaustion, she says, Trinidad signed a confession saying she had falsely registered her daughters as born in the United States.

That was that. By the time Trinidad, her daughters, and granddaughter were released, the sky was dark. Their entry documents had been taken away, and the Castro sisters were stranded in Mexico. What began as a “routine” return home to Brownsville had turned into a nightmare—one that would stretch over months, landing the Castros in a protracted legal battle and separating family members in Mexico and the United States.

They were not, they soon learned, alone. The Castros have filed suit in federal court against Customs and Border Protection. Their attorneys are seeking class-action status for the case, which could broaden its reach and have widespread implications along the border. The Castros’ experience last Aug. 24, their attorneys allege in court filings, was not an isolated incident, but a symptom of a systematic problem—a “window into the cases of dozens, if not hundreds, of similarly situated persons.” It’s also a window into the human costs associated with the U.S. government’s patchwork “crackdown” on illegal immigration.

Not long after the Castros were denied entry, a group of their U.S. relatives showed up at the Brownsville law office of Jaime Díez. An immigration attorney who has worked in the Valley for 12 years, Díez has become well known in the region for his pro bono immigration work, his strongly opinionated columns in a Mexican newspaper, and his weekly television commentaries on border and immigration issues for a Matamoros station. After he discussed the passport problem faced by U.S. residents returning from Mexico on one of his television spots, people started showing up at his studio.

Díez and other immigration attorneys in the Valley have heard of countless experiences similar to the Castros’. “Most people are totally unaware of this risk, which is why they fall into this trap,” says Lisa Brodyaga, who is working with Díez as a lead attorney on the Castro case. “We still do not know how often it is happening,” she says, because “when it happens to someone they end up in Mexico, cut off from access to counsel.”

Jessica Garcia, a Brownsville lab technician, was among those sent back to Matamoros without her legal documents. A few weeks later, after seeing Díez on TV, the 22-year-old Garcia and her mother went to the station to meet the attorney. She told him about her experience at a Brownsville international bridge on Halloween morning of last year—a morning that, she says, “changed everything, turned everything around for me.”

Two years earlier, Garcia’s husband had lost his U.S. work visa, and the family had moved back to Matamoros. Garcia kept her well-paying job at a Brownsville plasma center to support the family, which meant crossing daily through the port of entry.

Like the Castro sisters, Garcia had been delivered in Brownsville by midwife Trinidad Saldivar. Her mother, Ana Maria, remembers shopping in downtown Brownsville one day when she came across a colorful board on Saldivar’s front porch advertising her services. It was decked with a stork delivering a baby, she recalls. “Partera,” it read.

For Ana Maria, it seemed like a convenient way to have her baby in the United States and give her more opportunities. There was no need to commit fraud, she says. “If I had paid for a false document for Jessica,” she says, “I would have bought one for her older brother as well. But he is a Mexican citizen.”

On the ever-hardening line between the United States and Mexico, customs officials have long been accused of mistakenly detaining, deporting, or denying entry to U.S. citizens. Since a heightened security measure called the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative went into effect last June, most of those targeted for interrogation at ports of entry, immigration attorneys like Díez say, have been U.S. citizens who present birth documents registered by midwives—people like Garcia and the Castro sisters, born in U.S. homes, not hospitals. (See “Locked Out”)

The new mandate requires U.S. citizens to present passports, passport cards, or other “initiative-compliant” documents when crossing from Mexico by land. Even before it was implemented, the requirement brought to light a series of complications faced by people born with the assistance of midwives. For years, the U.S. State Department had been rejecting passport applications from people whose births were attended by midwives, citing the forgery convictions. The issue came to widespread attention two years ago, when an increasing number of border residents began requesting passports to comply with the new travel-security measures.

Immigration attorneys say they began to see a stream of cases in which the U.S. State Department sent applicants in bureaucratic loops, asking them to provide all sorts of supplementary proof of citizenship—including newspaper birth announcements and high-school yearbook photos. Rejected applicants included children, senior citizens, U.S. military veterans and federal employees. The process was so arbitrary, says Díez, that some siblings in the same family would get their passports while others were denied. The Castros were a case in point: While Laura Nancy received her passport within weeks of applying, Yuliana had been asked to provide additional proof of citizenship—and was still waiting when she was denied entry last August.

In a class-action lawsuit against the State Department, the ACLU and immigration attorneys representing citizens whose applications had been rejected claimed that the department had “adopted a blanket suspicion toward one group of passport applicants.” In a settlement last year, the department agreed to initiate new procedures and training for officials taking passport applications. The settlement helped some, but many others’ requests remain in limbo, says Díez. Customs officers at ports of entry, like the ones who sent Garcia and the Castros back to Mexico, are not bound by the agreement.

“These are issues that should be handled in a courtroom, not the port of entry, where people do not have access to counsel, nor their constitutional rights,” Díez says. For many U.S. citizens still awaiting passports, border checkpoints are where their fates are decided, with customs officers serving as judge and jury.

Citing ongoing legal proceedings, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials declined to comment about their procedures. Eddie Perez, public affairs liaison for ports of entry in Brownsville, would not say much, either. “CBP officials are not at liberty to discuss any cases under litigation,” he told the Observer. Perez said the issues can be difficult for customs officers to deal with. “We try to cover every base. We want to make sure every person we process is clear to enter,” he said. “Sometimes that process is long; sometimes it is short.”

For Yuliana and Laura Nancy Castro, the process has been long. Since their ordeal at the international bridge, a federal judge has granted the sisters permission to re-enter the United States, where they live with their husbands. But they can no longer visit their mother and extended family in Matamoros. Christmas and New Year’s were gloomy holidays, they say, spent around the dinner table in Laura Nancy’s Brownsville apartment, cut off from the celebrations of their Mexican family. Their mother is depressed, family members say, and has trouble eating. The separation has been especially tough on Laura Nancy, who was pregnant when she was denied entry and last month gave birth to a daughter. “My mother has not seen the baby,” she says, “only photos my husband has taken of her.”

Her husband and 3-year-old son, Polo, can still visit Trinidad Castro. Laura Nancy has trouble explaining to Polo why she can’t accompany them. “I tell Polo, ‘I can’t go. I am going to the doctor.’ I am always at the doctor,” she says.

Her son does not understand. Her teenage niece does. She planned to have her quinceañera this month. The coming-of-age ceremony is held on a girl’s 15th birthday. Her niece, Elvira Alexandra, had a band and dance hall booked in Matamoros, but she doesn’t want to have the party without her aunts, whom she calls her second mothers.

“Now the date is open,” says the girl’s mother, Maribel Ramirez de Castro. “It may seem like little changes, but they really affect your life.”

Jazmine Ulloa is a staff reporter for The Brownsville Herald.

Read Full Post »

Locked Out

by Melissa del Bosque

Published on: Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Until June 2009, U.S. citizens crossing the border from Mexico could present a driver’s license or certified copy of their birth certificate for entry. With the implementation of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, citizens must now carry a passport or passport card—if they can obtain one, that is.

The U.S. Department of State does not make it easy. As the story of the Castro sisters illustrates, the U.S. is denying passports to many Mexican-Americans birthed by midwives in Texas. Others are also caught in the legal snare, including people with delayed birth certificates or clerical errors in their birth certificates. The burden is on the Castros and others to prove they were born in the United States. That can be difficult, especially for older U.S. citizens, since the State Department requires such evidence as prenatal records and pay stubs, not to mention testimonies from parents and relatives—some of them deceased.

Those denied entry also include U.S. citizens who live in Mexico and are applying for a passport for the first time. The State Department estimates that demand for U.S. passports in Mexico will peak at nearly 3 million by 2011. U.S. citizens living in Mexico often are left scrambling for paperwork that can only be located in the United States.

The sweeping authority granted by Congress to border agents, coupled with tighter security measures and the initiative’s stricter requirements, is contributing to the increasing number of U.S. citizens being denied entry, according to immigration attorney Jaime Díez. With their clients barred from the country, attorneys are going to extraordinary lengths to gain access for their clients to U.S. courts.
“Imagine you are a U.S. citizen, but the Customs and Border Protection agent doesn’t believe you. You end up on a park bench in Mexico with no money, and your home and family is on the other side of the river,” says Díez.

The Castro sisters were among those with a compelling case that required a hearing in a U.S. courtroom. The problem was, they were stuck in Matamoros. Díez got in touch with San Benito immigration attorney Lisa Brodyaga. The seasoned attorney is known in immigration law circles for inventing a procedure for filing writ of habeas corpus claims for U.S. citizens who have been barred from the United States.

Brodyaga has the client meet Díez halfway across an international bridge. Once the client steps across the marker that denotes U.S. territory, the lawyer has the person sign the habeas corpus court documents, which demands that the U.S. government give her a hearing before a federal judge. He then phones Brodyaga, who submits the documents online while Díez waits with the client on the bridge.

“I’ve only used this procedure a handful of times,” Brodyaga says. “And I only resort to it in the most outrageous cases.”

Attorneys once could meet clients in waiting rooms at ports of entry. Since 9/11, security has become tougher, and now border agents won’t allow people to linger in waiting rooms. So Brodyaga has clients meet her, or Díez, on the bridge.

“Sometimes Border Patrol gets prickly about people standing on the bridge, so they send us back to Mexico,” she says. “Then we come back to the middle of the bridge after they’ve gone. Sometimes it’s like a dance.” Sometimes, as in the Castros’ case, it works.

Brodyaga says her bridge procedure has never been tested in the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, so it’s risky. The court could rule that standing in U.S. territory on an international bridge does not qualify as U.S. jurisdiction. But she feels she has no other choice as long as U.S. citizens are left with no access to the U.S. court system.

“When I started 30 years ago, I represented undocumented Mexicans. Then in the ’80s it was mostly Central Americans seeking asylum. Now the majority of my cases are U.S. citizens,” Brodyaga says. “That tells you a lot about what’s going on in this country right now.”

Brodyaga says there are no statistics on how many U.S. citizens have been denied entry into the United States. “But I am convinced it’s fairly common,” she says.

Both U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Department of State said they do not track statistics on the number of people claiming U.S. citizenship who are denied entry.

Part of the problem is a lack of judicial or legal oversight at ports of entry. In 1996, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. The legislation gave immigration agents at the border sole authority to determine whether a person can enter the United States. Prior to this legislation, people denied entry could request a hearing before an immigration judge.

“This is basically putting all of the authority regarding whether or not a person is eligible to be admitted to the United States in the hands of U.S. Customs and Border Protection,” says Kathleen Walker, general counsel for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “People have no right to counsel and no right to a phone call even.”

Increasingly, security issues at the border have pre-empted U.S. immigration law, says Díez. This means anyone with a more complicated immigration claim is detained or simply refused entry into the United States.

“They don’t allow for gray area anymore. The order seems to be, ‘err on the safe side,’” he says. “I think most people are for that if it means keeping the country safe—that is, until they are denied entry into the United States. Then you realize you are fighting the U.S. government. It’s a very scary situation.”

Díez says he’s sympathetic toward the plight of border agents. There is high turnover and a lot of burnout. Every year Congress requires that they do more.

“They have a lot of pressures on them,” he says. “Not only are they supposed to keep terrorists out, but also look for drugs, fake documents, and understand all of the difficult laws that apply to immigration.”

With the influx of new agents being assigned to the southern border, many come from northern states and aren’t familiar with border culture, Díez says. “They don’t understand families with mixed citizenship or why they cross the border so many times.”

Walker says immigration agents should at least videotape their interactions with U.S. citizens and immigrants at the border, much like police officers do. “There is no true accountability for these government officials who are able to insulate themselves from oversight,” she says.

Brodyaga and Díez hope the lawsuit they filed will force the U.S. government to establish due process for citizens like the Castros who find themselves in immigration limbo.

“You shouldn’t be interrogated alone in an office for 11 hours, then have your papers seized,” Díez says. “You should at least have the right to a hearing and legal counsel.”

Read Full Post »

USCIS Visa Bulletin for June 2010

VISA BULLETIN FOR JUNE 2010

 

A. STATUTORY NUMBERS

1. This bulletin summarizes the availability of immigrant numbers during June. Consular officers are required to report to the Department of State documentarily qualified applicants for numerically limited visas; the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Department of Homeland Security reports applicants for adjustment of status. Allocations were made, to the extent possible under the numerical limitations, for the demand received by May 10th in the chronological order of the reported priority dates. If the demand could not be satisfied within the statutory or regulatory limits, the category or foreign state in which demand was excessive was deemed oversubscribed. The cut-off date for an oversubscribed category is the priority date of the first applicant who could not be reached within the numerical limits. Only applicants who have a priority date earlier than the cut-off date may be allotted a number. Immediately that it becomes necessary during the monthly allocation process to retrogress a cut-off date, supplemental requests for numbers will be honored only if the priority date falls within the new cut-off date which has been announced in this bulletin.

2. Section 201 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) sets an annual minimum family-sponsored preference limit of 226,000. The worldwide level for annual employment-based preference immigrants is at least 140,000. Section 202 prescribes that the per-country limit for preference immigrants is set at 7% of the total annual family-sponsored and employment-based preference limits, i.e., 25,620. The dependent area limit is set at 2%, or 7,320.

3. Section 203 of the INA prescribes preference classes for allotment of immigrant visas as follows:

FAMILY-SPONSORED PREFERENCES

First: Unmarried Sons and Daughters of Citizens: 23,400 plus any numbers not required for fourth preference.

Second: Spouses and Children, and Unmarried Sons and Daughters of Permanent Residents: 114,200, plus the number (if any) by which the worldwide family preference level exceeds 226,000, and any unused first preference numbers:

A. Spouses and Children: 77% of the overall second preference limitation, of which 75% are exempt from the per-country limit;

B. Unmarried Sons and Daughters (21 years of age or older): 23% of the overall second preference limitation.

Third: Married Sons and Daughters of Citizens: 23,400, plus any numbers not required by first and second preferences.

Fourth: Brothers and Sisters of Adult Citizens: 65,000, plus any numbers not required by first three preferences.

EMPLOYMENT-BASED PREFERENCES

First: Priority Workers: 28.6% of the worldwide employment-based preference level, plus any numbers not required for fourth and fifth preferences.

Second: Members of the Professions Holding Advanced Degrees or Persons of Exceptional Ability: 28.6% of the worldwide employment-based preference level, plus any numbers not required by first preference.

Third: Skilled Workers, Professionals, and Other Workers: 28.6% of the worldwide level, plus any numbers not required by first and second preferences, not more than 10,000 of which to “Other Workers”.

Fourth: Certain Special Immigrants: 7.1% of the worldwide level.

Fifth: Employment Creation: 7.1% of the worldwide level, not less than 3,000 of which reserved for investors in a targeted rural or high-unemployment area, and 3,000 set aside for investors in regional centers by Sec. 610 of P.L. 102-395.

4. INA Section 203(e) provides that family-sponsored and employment-based preference visas be issued to eligible immigrants in the order in which a petition in behalf of each has been filed. Section 203(d) provides that spouses and children of preference immigrants are entitled to the same status, and the same order of consideration, if accompanying or following to join the principal. The visa prorating provisions of Section 202(e) apply to allocations for a foreign state or dependent area when visa demand exceeds the per-country limit. These provisions apply at present to the following oversubscribed chargeability areas: CHINA-mainland born, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, INDIA, MEXICO, and PHILIPPINES.

5. On the chart below, the listing of a date for any class indicates that the class is oversubscribed (see paragraph 1); “C” means current, i.e., numbers are available for all qualified applicants; and “U” means unavailable, i.e., no numbers are available. (NOTE: Numbers are available only for applicants whose priority date is earlier than the cut-off date listed below.)

Family	All Chargeability Areas Except Those Listed	CHINA-mainland born	DOMINICAN REPUBLIC	INDIA	MEXICO	PHILIPPINES
1st	08NOV04	08NOV04	08NOV04	08NOV04	22OCT92	15MAR95
2A	01JAN08	01JAN08	01DEC06	01JAN08	01DEC06	01JAN08
2B	15NOV02	15NOV02	01JUL02	15NOV02	15JUN92	08MAR99
3rd	22JUN01	22JUN01	22JUN01	22JUN01	22OCT92	22MAY92
4th	01SEP00	01SEP00	01SEP00	01SEP00	08DEC95	01APR88

 

*NOTE: For June, 2A numbers EXEMPT from per-country limit are available to applicants from all countries with priority dates earlier than 01DEC06. 2A numbers SUBJECT to per-country limit are available to applicants chargeable to all countries EXCEPT the DOMINICAN REPUBLIC and MEXICO with  priority dates beginning 01DEC06 and earlier than 01JAN08. (All 2A numbers provided for the DOMINICAN REPUBLIC and MEXICO are exempt from the per-country limit; there are no 2A numbers for the DOMINICAN REPUBLIC and MEXICO subject to the per-country limit.)

Employment- Based	All Chargeability Areas Except Those Listed	CHINA- mainland born	DOMINICAN REPUBLIC	INDIA	MEXICO	PHILIPPINES
1st	C	C	C	C	C	C
2nd	C	22NOV05	C	01FEB05	C	C
3rd	22JUN03	22JUN03	22JUN03	22OCT01	U	22JUN03
Other Workers	01JUN01	01JUN01	01JUN01	01JUN01	U	01JUN01
4th	C	C	C	C	C	C
Certain Religious Workers	C	C	C	C	C	C
5th	C	C	C	C	C	C
Targeted Employment Areas/ Regional Centers	C	C	C	C	C	C
5th Pilot Programs	C	C	C	C	C	C

 

The Department of State has available a recorded message with visa availability information which can be heard at: (area code 202) 663-1541. This recording will be updated in the middle of each month with information on cut-off dates for the following month.

Employment Third Preference Other Workers Category: Section 203(e) of the NACARA, as amended by Section 1(e) of Pub. L. 105-139, provides that once the Employment Third Preference Other Worker (EW) cut-off date has reached the priority date of the latest EW petition approved prior to November 19, 1997, the 10,000 EW numbers available for a fiscal year are to be reduced by up to 5,000 annually beginning in the following fiscal year. This reduction is to be made for as long as necessary to offset adjustments under the NACARA program. Since the EW cut-off date reached November 19, 1997 during Fiscal Year 2001, the reduction in the EW annual limit to 5,000 began in Fiscal Year 2002.

B. DIVERSITY IMMIGRANT (DV) CATEGORY

Section 203(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act provides a maximum of up to 55,000 immigrant visas each fiscal year to permit immigration opportunities for persons from countries other than the principal sources of current immigration to the United States. The Nicaraguan and Central American Relief Act (NACARA) passed by Congress in November 1997 stipulates that beginning with DV-99, and for as long as necessary, up to 5,000 of the 55,000 annually-allocated diversity visas will be made available for use under the NACARA program. This reduction has resulted in the DV-2010 annual limit being reduced to 50,000. DV visas are divided among six geographic regions. No one country can receive more than seven percent of the available diversity visas in any one year.

For June, immigrant numbers in the DV category are available to qualified DV-2010 applicants chargeable to all regions/eligible countries as follows. When an allocation cut-off number is shown, visas are available only for applicants with DV regional lottery rank numbers BELOW the specified allocation cut-off number:

Region	All DV Chargeability Areas Except Those Listed Separately
AFRICA	45,600	Except: Egypt: 24,200 Ethiopia: 25,100 Nigeria: 17,500
ASIA	19,550
EUROPE	31,000
NORTH AMERICA (BAHAMAS)	4
OCEANIA	1,175
SOUTH AMERICA, and the CARIBBEAN	1,300

 

Entitlement to immigrant status in the DV category lasts only through the end of the fiscal (visa) year for which the applicant is selected in the lottery. The year of entitlement for all applicants registered for the DV-2010 program ends as of September 30, 2010. DV visas may not be issued to DV-2010 applicants after that date. Similarly, spouses and children accompanying or following to join DV-2010 principals are only entitled to derivative DV status until September 30, 2010. DV visa availability through the very end of FY-2010 cannot be taken for granted. Numbers could be exhausted prior to September 30.

C. ADVANCE NOTIFICATION OF THE DIVERSITY (DV) IMMIGRANT CATEGORY RANK CUT-OFFS WHICH WILL APPLY IN JULY

For July, immigrant numbers in the DV category are available to qualified DV-2010 applicants chargeable to all regions/eligible countries as follows. When an allocation cut-off number is shown, visas are available only for applicants with DV regional lottery rank numbers BELOW the specified allocation cut-off number:

Region	All DV Chargeability Areas Except Those Listed Separately
AFRICA	54,100	Except: Egypt: 24,500 Ethiopia: 25,100 Nigeria: 18,850
ASIA	23,500
EUROPE	32,000
NORTH AMERICA (BAHAMAS)	5
OCEANIA	1,300
SOUTH AMERICA, and the CARIBBEAN	1,500

 

D. OVERSUBSCRIPTION OF THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC CHARGEABILITY

Continued heavy applicant demand for Family preference numbers has required the oversubscription of the DOMINICAN REPUBLIC chargeability for June, to hold issuances within the annual numerical limitation. The result has been the establishment of cut-off dates in the Family Second preference categories which are earlier than the Worldwide dates.

Read Full Post »